Les Mains sans sommeil [The Sleepless Hands]

Palais de Tokyo is welcoming The Sleepless Hands, a group exhibition of works by the nine artists who have taken part in the second cycle of the Artists’ Residencies programme of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.

Mentored by leading figures on the contemporary scene – Jean-Michel Alberola, Ann Veronica Janssens, Richard Fishman – the nine artists in residence have been able to discover the exceptional artisan skills applied at the Hermès workshops, primarily in France.

The exhibition focuses on the movements and gestures observed by its curator, Gaël Charbau, through his conversations with artists and artisans who have taken part in the last three years of the Residency programme in the Hermès workshops. It is not only conscious gestures, the result of deliberate ‘mind-to-hand or mind-to-body’ coordination, but the acquired autonomy of the skilled hand in particular, which acts as if ‘detached’ from the mind’s control. Artists and artisans are the repositories of this phenomenon. They take parallel, perfectly complementary approaches: artisans transmit gestures guided by expertise, while artists invent forms traversed by a spirit of laisser-faire.

At Palais de Tokyo, the works produced by the artists during their residencies are being accompanied by other works by these same artists. The exhibition also includes several performances by Jennifer Vinegar Avery, Clarissa Baumann and Célia Gondol.

The Sleepless Hands follows on from the exhibition Condensation at Palais de Tokyo in 2013, which brought together the works made by sixteen artists during the first cycle of the Artists’ Residencies programme of the Foundation.